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Sidebar 3.2.3: Avalanche Danger Scale
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Sidebar 3.2.3: Avalanche Danger Scale
http://www.nwac.noaa.gov/education_resources/dangerscale.htm Case Study 3.3: Tornado Safe RoomsIntroductionTornadoes are an unavoidable factor in the lives of people living throughout most of the United States. Every year without fail, they cause death, damage and distress. Of course, some areas of the country are at significantly greater risk than others. For years these high-risk states and communities have struggled to find ways to educate the public about the hazard risk and to reduce the hazard’s impact. Researchers at Texas Tech University studied various engineering methods and common sense approaches aimed at protecting lives and property during tornadoes. The tornado safe room idea was borne out of these efforts in the late 1970s; developed in the 1980s; and was gradually implemented in the 1990s. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) fully embraced and marketed the concept of safe rooms after a particularly devastating outbreak of tornadoes that struck in 1998. The states located in the so-called “Tornado Alley” were targeted for the construction of these safe rooms. In one such initiative in Oklahoma, more than 6,000 safe rooms were built following a set of twisters that struck the Midwest in 1999. President Bill Clinton publicly advocated the construction of safe rooms after the events described above and others. As safe room construction became more widespread, the emergence of success stories increased, anecdotally proving the worth of such mitigation measures. One community in particular, Moore, Oklahoma, which had suffered through the 1999 tornado events, claimed that many of its citizens were saved from a repeat of the tornado events in 2003 by the widespread use of safe room construction that had occurred in the interim. The wide acceptance of safe rooms as a mitigation technique for tornadoes has led to standards and regulations to self-police the industry. Though not all safe room builders and the shelters they construct meet FEMA guidelines, the code community has continued to work towards the development of unified standards. Congress, though not mandating safe rooms, is exploring legislation for wind hazard reduction - the first of its kind that addresses tornadoes, hurricanes or any other wind-driven events. The safe room concept has shown how mitigation techniques can succeed if a community, its residents, the government, and the private sector join forces to address a hazard or risk that will not simply vanish on its own. Background / EventsJarrell, TexasJarrell, Texas, lost 3 percent of its population on May 27, 1997, when a tornado with winds measured at over 261 mph devastated the small community in a matter of minutes. Twenty-seven deaths and $20 million in damages were observed. Assessments ranked this tornado an F5 on the Fujita Tornado Scale (See Sidebar 3.3.1), one of only six twisters registered at that intensity during the ten-year period of 1987-1997. Its seven-mile long, one-half mile wide path destroyed homes, families and any old notions about tornado preparedness that may have existed in the minds of residents. Tornado sirens had been sounded a full ten minutes before the winds had arrived, but still, 27 people died, and scores of others suffered personal injuries. Such a great number of casualties is rarely seen due to the relative rarity of intensity F5 events. Bathtubs and weakly constructed interior closets had often been cited as ideal shelters in various news reports, but these areas did not provide the promised levels of safety to the citizens who sought shelter there. One official described the aftermath of the powerful twister in stating that, “There’s no way anyone in that area, no matter how much warning they had, could have survived”. Luckily, many people did survive, but not without living through a harrowing experience. Following the event, as has occurred in most disasters throughout history, the drive to rebuild the community began as soon as the dead were buried: “For the most part, the search for survivors was a heartbreaking one, turning up only bodies and body parts. The passage of time brought burials, sorrow, numbness, the ebbing of hope. In the end, it seemed as if the resolve to rebuild was rekindled only because there was little else left to do”. The key question for Jarrell, and any other community recovering from a tornado, was how they would rebuild. The Jarrell city administrators could not have know that within their own state, at Texas Tech University, a new technology called the “Safe Room,” or In-Residence Shelter,” was being developed and tested to reduce the risk of what had just violently transpired within their jurisdiction. Directory: emiweb -> downloads downloads -> This "Other" category was created to accommodate submissions to the cert website for programs that indicate that they use the cert material. However, these organizations are not part of a local government jurisdiction downloads -> Community Emergency Response Team Appendix 1-A: Hazard Lesson Plans downloads -> Community Profile Download 0.94 Mb. Share with your friends:
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